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[BoredVirulence]

There is something wrong here...

You fill moats with magma, not zombies.

Why not both, in no particular order?

Because zombies are no longer fire-immune.

Maybe magma crab zombies, though ? So the moat actually spits magma, which is even more dwarven.

Thank you for giving me a reason to continue my plans with magma crabs. I previously planned on making them have constant temperature wool (so I could produce flame resistant clothing, doesn't work). I now have a reason to continue regardless, magma crab moats. I shall include complex jumping puzzles for them too.

Can you tame magma crabs? If so, magma crab towers are the penultimate fort defense.

No, but they attack everything. Or at least they did in last version. Or you can mod them to be tameable.

Wouldn't they burn the landscape though?

You say that as if it's a bad thing...

Yeah, you can at least mod them to be tameable. And really, whats the point of giving them wool if you can't tame and shear it? Now I get to add magma-moats-with-globs-of-basalt-spewing-forth-with-deadly-force to the usefulness of my modded magma crabs in addition to useless-constant-temperature-clothes. Its just another reason to do something stupid.

[Blue_Dwarf]

You say that as if it's a bad thing...

Wood doesn't grow on trees, you know. You need to chop some, and it's no good if it all burns to hell.

[PatrikLundell]

When you've gotten hold of magma crabs you surely have got access to fungal trees as well, so burning away the overland trees shouldn't be that much of a problem. Just make sure to block the crabs from putting your courtyard pasture+orchard on fire, or you'll run out of cider.
Also, it seemed mature trees could survive a fire when a Titan started one for me, so you may still have some overland trees left anyway.

[Naryar]

You say that as if it's a bad thing...

Wood doesn't grow on trees, you know. You need to chop some, and it's no good if it all burns to hell.

You mean the caverns doesn't have enough wood ?

Also underground tree farms.

[Niddhoger]

It might be that it doesn't take that long to breach the caverns if you dedicate one miner to it, but it still means you're one miner short for the other basic stuff, like an underground farm, workshops, food/booze stockpile, quarters,...

Also, I don't make my courtyard from blocks, but from logs, and there tend to be trees around that need to be removed anyway.

That's why you bring two miners.  Also, digging underground farms are -very- quick to do from dirt.  You don't need 1000000 squares of it, as even with half-trained farmers 2 squares easily feeds+boozes up three dorfs.  I never actually do this though, as there is no reason your dorfs shouldn't be picking herbs while your miners dig (unless you are in an evil biome, desert, or other lifeless embark).  They have nothing better to do before the miners get things set up, so they might as well gather some early food/brewable plants.  You can dig the dining room first, but you don't need to make a giant 20x20 dining room off the bat.  Something like 5x5 works until you get a couple of migrant waves- just leave room for the expansion.  Also, unless you embarked right next to a tower- nothing will attack you for a couple of years.  If you massively push wealth from day 1 you might need defenses up that quickly- but why would you? You are seriously overestimating the time it takes to breach caverns- its less than a month to hit hte magma sea.  Your farmers and what not can't even be working if you are needing to build a giant structure worth at least a few hundred logs of walls and floors placed one at a time. 

[PatrikLundell]

My initial underground farm plot is 3*3, but I place and underground seed stockpile there, as well as the brewery, a farmer's workshop for thread production, 3 looms, and 3 clothiers in the area, plus the QS' needed to feed these, although I don't build all of these at once. I tend to use the area as a temporary stockpile out of reach of thieving critters early on, though, and since it's dug in dirt it's fairly quick to dig (although my miners are always completely untrained on embark).
After that I dig the workshop area, which typically ends up being dug in stone underneath the farming area and get to work constructing cage traps, mine carts, mechanisms, etc. and that's when the courtyard builders/stockpile haulers see a drain in manpower.
Next comes the kitchen/animal pen/butcher/tanner/fish cleanery, although I tend to dig out only the animal pen at first to get the animals in place.
Thereafter the initial dining hall, and I also tend to dig a 3*3 room for the accountant. That's about when the summer migrants arrive, and I still don't have any bed rooms.

Now, if I was to embark in an environment that's too hostile on the surface, like a glacier, I'd probably skip bringing grazing livestock and try to buy them from caravans instead. The only thing I want from grazers is wool, anyway (I could go one step further and buy wool cloth directly, to support moods), but as far as I know there aren't any shearable cavern critters except trolls, which are considered too intelligent to be kept in captivity by dorfs, and so are better off killed (I've gotten some thread from clown hair, but that thread is not usable for cloth, and I suspect the same thing goes for wooly titans/FBs).
I also SHOULD get complications in the form of an aquifer since I try to have them in my embarks, although so far I haven't been completely blocked by them.

[HartLord]

How well do metal bar walls do against climbers?

[Bumber]

How well do metal bar walls do against climbers?

Very poorly. At par or worse than rough walls.

[Montieth]

I have had passable success with the following:

Top side I build a small keep on a hill or as part of a cliff face. A hill is easier as you can shoot down in all directions. The core layer gets a keep. 2-3 towers, a few rooms, an office or two for the militia and they all get windows or fortifications to look out upon the landscape with.

The keep gets a curtain wall, usually 2-3 layers high and topped with walls topped with fortifications and that level a roof. The curtain wall usually set atop a second layer down from the keep, if stone that is smoothed. If soil it's dug out and replaced with blocks of what ever the native stone is. Walls of keep and curtain wall both top their layer out by a tile so there is an overhang. This helps avoid most of the climbers. Having one set of archers in the center keep and another in the covered and protected fortifications helps greatly. Sometimes a spry goblin tops a wall and he's now seen by an entire squad. He is soon pincushioned.

If time permits, then a third wall is erected out of wood cut from the path it takes, that is atop a dry moat which is three wide and one deep. Diggin it takes no time at all in soil by then. It also has an overhang. This goes around a nearby forest preserve and usually serves not to keep goblins out but to slow them down allowing the gatherers and wood cutters to hoof it to safety. There is usually one open gate which crosses the moat and allows the past the outer perimeter wall but that's just the way it works. Sometimes the moat has to be cleared of trees. So does the walls. But the hill forts work well and usually cover the entrance that goes to a grand entrance wall where I can let goblins in, trap them behind sets of gates and rain iron bolts down at my dwarves' leisure. Last few seiges have had nothing inside the walls and nothing where I didn't want it. And wounded goblins and trolls are very poor climbers.

Now, militarily speaking, no fortifications are useful if not covered by defensive fire. I use a path that is circuitous to allow an easier path rather than over the wall. But it is a path that the goblins will have to run through traps or past archers or something. That takes the stuffing out of them.

Every good fort has to have a place you let the enemy in. (cf The Seven Samuraii)  Then the walls no longer serve to keep them out, but to keep them in. (cf Walter Kovachs)